


Pretty Peach

by twowritehands



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth - All Media Types
Genre: Bondage, Esca is turned on by storms, Feminization, M/M, Mild D/s, Modern AU, astrophobia, cross-dressing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:15:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twowritehands/pseuds/twowritehands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus is stranded by a storm and all the hotels are booked. His extremely helpful assistant manages to contact an old teammate of his that’s living in the area who he can stay with. Esca has changed a lot since college. For one thing, he’s wearing a skirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: this is hands down the kinkest thing I've ever written

A hurricane is coming, that’s what the weather reports are saying. Well, of course a hurricane is coming. Marcus leans heavily on the payphone and groans into the receiver.

“This is unbelievable, Cottia; the hotel lost my reservations and because of the storm, every plane has been grounded so people flocked in hours ago to gets dibs on all the rooms-- everywhere is booked!”

His assistant keeps her cool, like she’s paid to do, and he can hear her typing away as she murmurs through several fast-fix scenarios, rejecting each one as the planning falls through. Marcus listens with his forehead on the bricks above the phone, his eyes closed. He can hear the people crowded around him --he is only one of hundreds who do not have a place to sleep tonight and are forced by the storm to camp here in the random hotel lobby they happened to be in when the worst of the storm started.

Police swarm through the crowd, attempting to help the hotel staff organize the masses into places safe from the big windows in case the hurricane actually hits the coast. The rain sloshes on the windows like a carwash power jet, except there is no rhythm to it. Marcus wishes he was back in LA with his assistant and his Uncle and everyone else he knows, where it is sunny and the sky never turns on the pathetic humans who live under it.

“Shit,” Cottia says, much to Marcus’ horror.

“What?” he asks. He can’t remember a time she has ever failed him and he does not like that she has chosen to do so now, when his back is tense from the storm, and he just wants to hide under his blankets with a flash light like he used to do as a kid when it thundered.

Marcus _hates_ storms.

“Don’t panic,” she says. “But, um… I’m out of ideas. You’ll have to stay wherever you are.”

Despite her order not to panic, Marcus’ skin prickles with goose pimples and his heart rate goes up. “No, no, no, Cots--come on. This place is all windows, and the floor is marble, and there are about a hundred other people!” He’s too rich for this; he really, really, is.

“There has to be _something_ \--forget about hotels. Do you have a Sorority sister or maybe a fourth cousin’s ex-roommate’s aunt or something that I can stay with? Or try looking for someone I know--look through all my little black books. Fuck it, I’ll stay with an ex if I have to. Preferably one with a basement. Do I have any exes with a basement in Florida, Cottia?”

She does not laugh at him, and that’s why she’s been his assistant for nearly ten years as opposed to the expected three to four. “I’ll look--but how bad is the storm getting?”

Marcus glances at the windows but doesn’t look long because the tossing around of the palm trees out there makes him nervous. He does, however, still see cars and cabs and buses passing by so if he only had a place to go, he could still get there. “Not too bad, yet. Hurry, though.”

“On it,” she says. “I’m going to need all my gears for this. I’ll call you back in ten.”

He gives her the number of the payphone and adds, “Love you,” waiting for her to echo it before hanging up. He turns and leans on the wall and tries to keep his cool as he watches people crowd up the hallways and any nook and cranny away from the glass of outside windows.

He is vaguely reminded of storm drills in his Appalachian public school but this is much more intense than that; the light is all weird from the darkness outside the windows and the people are half rain soaked and babies are squalling, tensions running high in adults who promised to be home only to be stuck here.

Marcus straightens his tie and won’t remove his jacket or rain coat because he won’t be staying here; he needs a bed or a couch _at least_. He needs peace and quiet. He needs friends, not strangers. He needs the sky to stop looking so sickeningly black outside the windows.

When the payphone rings eleven minutes later, he snatches it up, “Please,” he says.

“Oh, poor baby,” she chuckles fondly and something in his shoulders relaxes because she must have something or she wouldn’t be acting so familiar with him. Cottia isn’t like this in crisis, she’s professional in crisis, so to be like this means crisis must be over. “Give me the address,” he says. He does not even care who it is. He just wants to get there now before the roads are closed.

She gives the address and adds, “It’s Francesco Briggs.”

Marcus frowns, “Who?”

“Your goalie in college? Your number for him was crap, but someone else I called told me how to reach him.”

All at once, his memory supplied him with the short, fierce little collegiate soccer teammate who called the game _football_ and blamed all stupid things on the fact that it happened to be inside the American border. He swore fluidly-- _fockin ‘ell_ \--and made fun of Thanksgiving but took the cranberry sauce seriously. He had also been majoring in modern dance, was really into punk rock, and frequently spent his weekends in the hard core BDSM sex scene with men twice his size.

One hell of a goalie, though.

“Oh, you mean Frankie,” Marcus smirks and remembers writing out _Francesco_ in his contact book all those years ago because it was hilarious. College kids.

“I called him and he’s expecting you.”

“Thanks, Cots. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Hurry before you blow away.” She laughs and hangs up. He gets a policeman to call him a cab and jumps into it, giving the address and then praying for eight blocks that he makes it there alive.

|           |           |           |

A ground-quaking crash of thunder has Marcus scurrying into the lobby of Frankie’s building at a pace far too quick to be manly. He drops his luggage and shakes out the rain from his coat and hair. Laughter behind him, over at the stairs, draws his attention.

Without turning, he knows who it is. It’s been over ten years since he last heard that snicker but he recognizes it, especially when the British voice adds, “Well _you_ moved up in the world, didn’t you, peach? LOOK AT THAT SUIT!”

Marcus laughs at the nickname, which he’d gotten in college for being a big softy from Georgia, the peach state. “Frankie, you haven’t changed a--“

He cuts off abruptly here because he turns and sees Frankie, and his statement is no longer accurate. Frankie is still short and blond with a face of angles. But his scruff is gone and his skin is smoothed by foundation, eyes highlighted with color, lips shiny with gloss.

And he’s in a skirt.

“I’m legally Francesca now and _Esca_ to my friends.”

Marcus stares. Frankie’s hair is short, styled in a way that doesn’t pick a side. Diamond studs sparkle in his ears; a few rings go up one lobe. His shirt is a very low v cut that clings to strong broad shoulders. A silver chained necklace rests on his waxed chest, a pendant between his defined pectorals. His sleeves are short enough to show a tattoo of a blue wavy band across one bicep. The skirt sits low on his narrow hips and is long, swishy and white. His les appear to be shaved, but no less muscular than Marcus remembers. He’s barefoot with blue toenails.

He’s _gorgeous_.

Frankie--no, Esca--stares back, obviously humored by Marcus’s stupefied expression. It’s only because another crash of thunder makes Marcus jump that he snaps out of it and clears his throat, looking away. “Whoa. You’re--uh…”

“Doing well.”

“Yeah!” Marcus is quick to say; he doesn’t want to offend because he does not really care one way or the other what people like to wear or why. He’s just surprised. “Great,” he adds. “That’s cool.”

Esca smiles with his cheeks crunching up around the corners of his mouth, all his white teeth on display, his ears sticking out, and it is the same smile from ten years ago. He walks over--skirt swishing around his smooth shins--and picks up the luggage Marcus dropped. “Then jaw off the floor, mate, and get a move on. We have to take the stairs. Power’s out.”

|           |           |           |

“So,” Marcus tries not to watch Esca’s ass in the skirt as he climbs the stairs ahead of him. “Thanks for letting me stay--I would have been a wreck if I had to sleep on a floor with a bunch of strangers in the middle of this storm.”

“No problem,” Esca snorts. “I remember you panicking that time it started to storm in the middle of a game.”

“I wasn’t panicking. I was just nervous. I hate storms.”

Esca snorts, “You ask me, there’re less beautiful things in the world to hate.”

“He’s so poetic now,” Marcus teases. Then, in a half panic, adds, “Or is it she?”

“ _He’s_ fine,” Esca replies with a sigh and a wave of his hand. “Cock’s still there, so why not?”

“Ha!” Marcus laughs, weirdly feeling relief that the cock is still there. “I feel like I should have seen this coming.”

“Why? Because I was such a girl in college?” Esca asks, and both of them remember Frankie, who might have been gay but was a far cry from anything feminized. Clearly now he’d been running from himself.

“Because you were always so unexpected in college,” Marcus counters, “No matter what you did, no one could ever predict it. It’s why nothing ever got by you in the goal.”

“Would it surprise you to know that in half those games I wore panties under the suit?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, not at all now you’ve seen me like this.”

“Yeah, not _now_ ,” Marcus agrees, “but then? God knows what I would have done if I’d have known then. I probably would have just--“

“Panicked,” they say in unison and they laugh.

Being the southern Baptist boy at UCLA, Marcus had tended to get nervous and awkward around a lot of unconventional things in his college dorm, including his own bisexuality. Very quickly he earned the rep as the big scary looking guy who wasn’t at all scary up close. One or two anxiety attacks later and Marcus was also categorized as prone to panicking, though it wasn’t really the case. Well, not entirely, anyway.

“Here we are,” Esca shoves open a door and a big crash of thunder happens just as Marcus steps into a world of flickering candle-light. It’s a small but tidy space and it smells of scented candles. He takes a deep breath of the satisfying smell.

“Bamboo.”

“Good nose.”

“I’m part panda.”

“Ha!”

A yipping bark suddenly fills the apartment and an overgrown puppy barrels from the hallway and attacks Marcus’ feet.

“No! Leave it, Cub. LEAVE IT!” Esca scoops the squirming mixed breed half-wolf creature up and only has a hold on him for a few minutes before it leaps free.

“Sorry about him--a rescue. Haven’t gotten him trained up yet.”

“It’s fine.”

“You’re soaked. Bathroom’s that way if you want to change.”

“Thanks.”

|           |           |           |

There’s a corset air-drying on a rack beside the sink. It's red velvet, and black lace, and silk, with a long wide strip of laces and silver brackets that gleam in the candle light. Marcus can’t _not_ look at it as he gets out of his tailor made suit and into gym pants and a t-shirt, stealing glances at the thing.

He uses a hand towel to scrub the last of the cold rain drops from his hair and takes a moment to tentatively reach out and rub his knuckles over the velvet. He smiles at the sensual texture. Then, thinking it’s too weird to be hiding out in the bathroom, groping some guy’s underwear, he quickly rejoins Esca in the living room.

The transformed goalie is sitting on the couch, one leg tucked under, one leg stretched out on the coffee table, fabric of the skirt draped over the limbs beautifully. Down in the floor, Cub is playing enthusiastically with a toy. Esca stretches his arms above his head and then stretches both legs out and leans forward, easily holding his toes.

“So besides getting filthy rich, what have you been doing with your time, Marcus?”

“Obviously not as much self-actualization as you’ve been doing. I kind of envy you for it.”

“Uh oh, don’t tell me you’ve been ignoring urges to put on lace knickers.”

“No,” Marcus laughs reflexively. “But I’ve been doing nothing _but_ getting rich. Work, work, work--don’t get me wrong, I love it; I’m good at it. It just doesn’t leave a lot of time for me. No time for fun.”

“Except during hurricanes.”

“Vicious displays of _fuck you puny humans_ from God are far from fun.”

“Ha!” Esca leaps up from the couch and goes over to his window to pull up the blinds. “You and storms--that kind of phobia is supposed to stop when you get your permanent teeth in. No one thirty is supposed to be scared.”

“For some people it's spiders, some snakes, some airplanes,” he shrugs, “Mine’s storms.”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t tease. Mine’s monkeys.”

“No it’s not,” Marcus laughs.

“I swear it is. I had a horrific experience at the zoo with my mum, didn’t I? No, I didn’t really. It’s just that the little buggers have black beady eyes and human like fingers, and that _shrieking_ thing they do… Then there’re those stories of chimps tearing the faces off of nice ladies.” He shivers and then shrugs. “So I don’t go to the zoo.”

“Or watch _Planet of the Apes_.”

Esca taps his nose and Marcus laughs, having fun despite the roll of thunder outside just now. Silence falls in the flickering orange glow of the candles and Marcus finds he is admiring the bottom half of Esca as he stands there. There is so much opposition in where the swishy skirt flows around the manly but smooth legs… Marcus’ thoughts drift upward to smooth thighs of thick lean muscle… He wonders what the skirt feels like to the touch; he can’t tell what kind of fabric is it from this distance in this poor lighting… maybe it’s soft as worn flannel. That would be nice…

“Drink?” Esca asks, snapping Marcus out of it.

“Sure,” his voice cracks like a teenager and he’s forced to clear his throat like one. Esca is grinning at it as he swishes by--a whiff of girly shampoo--and then he’s gone into the kitchen. Left alone in the flickering light of an unfamiliar middle-class living room, Marcus is suddenly aware of the silence and feels like he should pick the conversation back up, keep it going in the easy way it’d been a moment ago.

But something has changed, shifted so that this suddenly feels like a date, like a fast track to sex, and Marcus has never ever wanted to have sex with a man in a dress before but he can’t get that corset out of his head.

He finally realizes he can sit and does just as Esca comes back with some beers.

“Thanks,” Marcus is at ease at the sight of the brown glass bottles--if it’d been wine he’d be panicking right now. Esca sits beside him, legs going under him.

“So are you married to that profusely _efficient_ little bird that gave me a ring earlier?” he asks.

“Uh--no. Not to anyone.”

“Kids?”

“No.”

Esca grins and leans forward to clink the necks of their bottles together with a wink, “Here’s to hurricanes.”

He takes a swig and Marcus mirrors him. Esca is shaking his head when the bottle parts from his lips with a wet smack. He’s chuckling, “Captain Marcus Aquila after all this time; small world, isn’t it?”

“I’d say it’s more crazy then small.”

“Touche,” Esca says. Sitting sideways on the cushion, he puts an elbow on the back of the seat and leans on that hand, watching Marcus from his end of the couch.

They talk and sip beer until they have remembered everything they care to remember about their college years--then Marcus learns the difference between a cross-dresser and a trans-gender, because he keeps confusing Esca with a man who wants to be a woman, and not just a man in woman’s clothes.

They lose count of how many times Esca has to say, “I love my cock, but I love lingerie too,” and Marcus staves off panicked thoughts with large swallows of beer, but Esca is never sharp or upset; always corrects with a mild statement and then a shrug or a smile when Marcus stammers and blushes.

Their beers are low when a lull falls that gives them time to catch their breath after a rib cracking laugh over the picture Esca had pulled out of an old textbook.

The full soccer team crowds the frame, lined in victory. It looks as if the shot was taken just as Marcus thumped Esca on the back enough to upset his equilibrium.  The two most amusing points to this photo are that 1.) Esca was unshaven, face hair styled into mutton chops which  had made him stand out very starkly in the middle of his ballet classes. 2.) Esca swears he was wearing lace panties even then--in direct contrast to the overgrown sideburns.

Esca turns the photo over as if he would rather forget about it for another ten years and Marcus leans back to quell his laughter, forgetting to wonder why that picture—of all pictures—was spared when Esca freely admits he prefers to forget his Frankie years and focus on being Esca, on being happy.

Marcus thinks about that corset again and wonders if things like that can really be the key to happiness, then he shakes himself out of it and sips some more beer. Esca rests his head back on the cushion.

The only sounds are the rain on the glass, the wind and the thunder. Lightning flickers, overpowering the gentle glow of the candles. As if the disturbing sounds are a lullaby, Esca’s eyes drift closed and Marcus sees as his chest rises high and sinks low in a deep sigh.

Marcus focuses on drinking his beer, tries to not let his eyes linger on any part of Esca’s body--not his flat stomach, his slender hips, not the way the skirt sits against his thighs, not the chain glittering around the slopes of his neck.

When thunder booms suddenly and loudly, Marcus starts to feel antsy and, in want of distracting himself, leaves the past behind and turns to the present, asking, “So, um, how long have you lived here?”

Esca waves a hand and gently hushes him, “Shhhh, just listen.”

“To the storm?” Marcus asks.

“Hmm, it’s so….” Before Esca finds whatever word he’s looking for, Marcus cuts in.

“Do you mind if--I’m sorry, but when I say I don’t like storms, I mean I _really_ don’t like them. Can’t we keep talking? I need to keep my mind off of it.”

Esca opens his eyes and studies Marcus in surprise. “It’s really that bad?”

“Yeah. It’s called Astraphobia. I used to cry when I was younger.” Marcus lifts a hand and allows Esca to see it shaking, “Now I’m just down to shaking.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, but I’m okay if I can keep my mind off of it.”

Esca sits his nearly empty beer on the table, immediately complying to Marcus’s request, “You went pro, didn’t you? What happened there?”

“Ruined my knee,” Marcus says, happy that Esca is indulging him. “It took three surgeries and several pins.”

“Oh, that’s bullocks, man, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, it all worked out.”

“So it did.”

Considering the next thing for him to say is an obvious one, the silence stretches out far too long before Marcus realizes that Esca is waiting for him to ask, “So--um, what about you? What’s going on?”

“I dance at a local club,” Esca says. Marcus thinks he knows what that means, but his hesitation to believe it shows on his face because Esca grins and adds in a conspiratorial stage whisper, “Strip club.”

Marcus clears his throat again and he wishes he didn’t because it’s so sixteen-year-old, but he nods and tries his best to play it cool, “Good money in that?”

“Tips alone pay rent.”

“Wow.”

“Hey, when you’re good at something it pays off. Take a look at yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“No, you said it first. What do I know about how good you are? I don’t know a thing about sports advertising.”

Marcus laughs and asks, “But what about your dance degree--I mean, I don’t recall you majoring in _erotic_ dancing.”

Esca waves a hand, “No sad story or anything. I just stumbled on this little niche and I like it, I’m good at it, so I do it.”

“It’s not--dangerous?”

“There are always a few assholes. But nothing I can’t handle. All I do is wriggle out of my clothes on stage; I’m not a tranny prostitute or anything.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“No apologies, mate. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Right,” he swallows the second _sorry_ and Esca snorts and a hand drops on Marcus’ knee. “You’re as precious as I remember.”

“Oh,” drops out of Marcus and he stares down at the hand, strong and manicured with shiny nails.

“If I’m making you uncomfortable just say so.”

“N-no,” he stammers and with more resolve to be less lame about this, he meets Esca’s eye. “No. You’re okay. You’re… pretty.”

The smile is two parts amused, one part flattered and his voice is under his breath as if he’s talking more to himself as he takes Marcus’ chin in his fingers, “Oh, look at you…”

Marcus’s eyes are caught on the swoop of Esca’s neck and he licks his lips and wants him to know, even if it’s not true, “I’m usually a lot smoother than this.”

On perfect cue, lightning cracks, illuminating the room at the same time that thunder shakes the couch and Marcus leaps out of his skin. Even Esca and Cub jump and then the dog is barking and then Esca’s laugh is long, loud and sincere and Marcus has to join in.

Way too soon, lightning cracks again and then debris hits the window, not breaking it but banging loudly. Esca hurries over to look and Marcus grabs at him, “Careful!”

They can hear what must be sand and pebbles pelting the glass and outside the trees are nearly sideways and small debris is hurling horizontal through the air. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Esca murmurs and he slumps against the window frame to watch as if hypnotized.

Marcus feels shaky and wriggles in his seat, “Is it alright to be on the fourth floor? I mean, is this building strong enough for us to be okay up here?”

“Fuck if I know,” Esca says. He leaves the window and strides to his front door. “Be right back--Cub take care of him, yeah?”

Cub barks and Esca swishes out into the hall. Marcus puts his empty beer bottle on the coffee table and goes over to close the blinds so that he doesn’t have to see the black clouds and horrific wind. Lightning cracks again and he hurries away from the glass, trips over the dog toy, barely catches himself on the book shelf.

Esca is back, speaking, “Neighbors say we’ll be fine until cars are flying around and then we should probably bunk off downstairs. Oy--what’re you up to?”

Marcus stands and lets go of the shelf, “nothing.”

Esca narrows his eyes at him and sees him flinch when something goes banging down the asphalt, some chained-together metal trash cans by the sound of it. Esca goes to see and Marcus can’t help the “No, stay back!” that jumps out of him. He distinctly remembers his grandmother telling him when he was small, that lightning can strike him through a window. True or not, it’s made him never go near windows in a storm.

“Oh,” Esca has his bottom lip out and he comes at Marcus, ensnaring him without warning in a embrace. Esca hugs him under his arms, tight around his ribs with his ear to his chest. His short spikey hair tickles Marcus’ chin. “You precious thing, I don’t know what to do with you.”

“Distract me,” Marcus says as his arms go around Esca. He isn’t one to hug people, really, and especially people he just met, or met again after ten years. But he likes the squeeze of Esca’s arms, the heat of his body, the smell of his hair.

“I’m bang out of puzzles, I’m afraid,” Esca teases. “How else does one distract a good ol’ country Baptist like you?”

Marcus dips and puts his lips to Esca’s hair, “You’re doing great already.”

Esca’s voice is smiling, ear still against Marcus’ chest, “Am I, now? How interesting--seems you _have_ been doing some self-actualizing. I don’t think you’d have said something like that to anybody with a cock last time I saw you.”

This is true; Marcus has long since come to terms with his bisexuality. But his type in men is usually taller, tougher… in pants… He does not know if it’s the storm putting him on edge so that any familiar face is enough to make him feel this way or if it really is the clothes, but Marcus’s heart rate is skyrocketing now that Esca’s body is pressed against his.

“Esca,” Marcus says letting a hint of his want into his voice as his hands swoop down Esca’s spine to his lower back and side. “I know we barely know each other, but can you…” He trails off, thinking he should forget it, make up some other request. A harmless request. A less demanding, less pervy request out of this person he hasn’t seen in over ten years.

“Go on, say it,” Esca urges gently. Knowingly.

“Can you dance for me?” he asks and then adds in a rush, “I don’t want to freak you out, and if you--“

“Hmm,” Esca’s hum of a chuckle cuts in and he’s tightening his hold a little and snuggling his face into Marcus’ collarbone for a minute. He rolls onto his chin and his eyes glitter in the candle light as he looks up at Marcus. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“No reason for you to be--I would never--I just thought a dance would keep my mind off--I wouldn’t touch-- ...Only if you want me to, Esca.” Usually, he is smoother than this, he really is. But usually, he’s in a familiar situation. Nothing about a stripper man in a dress is familiar.

“Oh, what to do with you,” Esca breathes again like he’s talking more to himself than to Marcus. Marcus knows what this is about: past lovers have told him how he can sometimes be so awkwardly sweet there’s nothing anyone knows what to do but say _awe_.

Marcus would rather be _aloof_ and _cool_ than _awkward_ and _sweet_ , but there is nothing he can do about it; he’ll never magically just know how to be calm and collected in unfamiliar situations. At least he has his good looks.

Esca lifts to his toes and presses their mouths together, a firm hand gripping the back of Marcus’s neck. It’s a kiss much more feral than Marcus anticipated but that’s alright; he likes that it feels like Esca has been holding back and is finally free, free with _him_.

Marcus wants so much to be free, too.

When the kiss breaks, thunder rolls and with it Esca trembles slightly, “I think we can help each other out.”

“You--have a problem?”

“The exact opposite of you, I think. No idea what it’s called but storms make me…” he doesn’t say it, simply presses into Marcus’ leg to demonstrate the hard ridge in his skirt. Marcus gulps and Esca cards all ten fingers through Marcus’ hair, kisses him again with that same untamed slice of fire. He breaks to ask, “So will getting me off be distraction enough for you?”

“Yes,” Marcus pants, lets his hands slide down to cup Esca’s round firm ass in his hands, to squeeze the flesh as he presses against Esca.

“I don’t want to dance,” Esca confesses. “Not right now; I want to keep my clothes on. Can I keep my pretty clothes on while I fuck you?”

“God, yes,” Marcus breathes and he’s too far gone in the urgency of Esca’s movements against him, too lost in the candle light that has gotten into his head to care anymore.

The storm is in another world. Here in the candlelight it doesn’t matter that he never usually goes this fast with someone, that he has never before wanted a man in women’s clothes to top him. All he knows is that he wants this and he’s free to have it.

The grip of Esca’s hands on his jaw is vice-like, but delicious. His tongue is taken wholly into Esca’s mouth. Marcus breaks their lips apart to say, “Let’s get in your bed.”

Esca jumps and all at once, he’s on Marcus’ hips, legs wrapped around him. Marcus’ hands find bare thigh as Esca commands,

“Carry me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Esca wants to play a game...

Steered into the bedroom, Marcus stops with his legs against the edge of the bed, and Esca lowers himself down onto his knees on the mattress. Marcus does not even hear the crack of the lightning that illuminates the apartment because Esca’s pushing down the gym pants and pulling off the undershirt and running his hands over all of Marcus’ skin. “So big and strong…” He looks up, penetrating eyes half in shadow half sparkling from the candle light, “you’ll let me fuck you?”

Marcus nods as a thrill rushes through him and weighs down his cock. He sits on the bed next to Esca, who hooks his hands at the back of his neck and swings a thigh across his lap, skirt fanning beautifully as the lithe man settles against Marcus’ hardness, reclaiming his mouth as the wind howls and more pebbles clang against the glass behind the bedrooms’ drawn shades.

Lightning and thunder grabble for dominance, screaming in fury. Something big—Marcus guesses a plastic sign by the hollow thud—strikes the wall just beneath the window with a force that knocks him entirely out of the moment.

He jumps and looks wildly at the covered windows. As much as he hates seeing the black clouds outside, he thinks not knowing exactly what’s happening out there might be worse. His entire body is shaking again, and the heat in his lap has reduced significantly, and even a few experimental ruts from Esca can’t revive it.

Marcus is mortified. “I...I’m sorry, it’s not you really—“

“Shh, it’s okay,” Esca whispers; one hand combs into Marcus' hair and the other slips under an arm for another squeeze to the ribs, his lips press into the tender junction of neck and shoulder. “’S just a storm...”

“It’s a _hurricane_ ,” Marcus corrects, and his voice is not as strong as he would like.

“It’s just passing by. It won’t come any closer,” Esca assures with the same kind of lilting humor of a person just trying not to smile. Marcus appreciates the effort even if it does nothing to sooth him.

He gulps and nods, wishing he could believe Esca’s promise, but the forecasters had said it wouldn’t be this close and _it is_ , so what if they are wrong again? What if it is turning inland?

His heart is racing away with his breath and he’s one more big-pebble against the glass from leaping up and hiding in the bathtub with the weather radio or something. He feels pathetic and says so, “I mean I _know_ I’m over reacting. That’s the stupid part. But look—look at me!” he holds out his shaking hand again. “I can’t stop it.”

Esca catches the hand and presses it to his mouth. “Do you want to play a game with me, Marcus?”

“Hmm, wha...?”

“I’ve an idea for a game that might make this easier,” Esca ruts his still hard cock into Marcus’ solid abdominals and gasps lightly. The soft sound, so close to Marcus’ ear, shocks his skin into goose-pimples, and his shakes adopt a new frequency that makes Esca chuckle, “there we go, mate, a game—you _like_ games, don’t you?” he asks, thrilled.

Marcus is, in fact, rising very quickly to the idea. As Esca wiggles in delight over the renewed arousal, Marcus smooths the skirt against Esca's perfect little ass and the fabric is as soft as he thought it would be. “What kind of game, Esca?” he asks hoarsely. He can no longer hear the grit slapping the glass, because there is a roar of blood in his ears.

Esca hums as he kisses Marcus, and then he asks with hot breath brushing over Marcus’s face with its own thunder, “Dress up? Do you want to play dress up with me, Marcus?”

“Dress up,” Marcus breathes back. He’s never played that. Actually, he’s never really played a full-out game before; just little role-playing things, once or twice, nothing dramatic, definitely no costumes.

Marcus wants to put on a costume this time; boy does he want to.

“Yeah,” he chokes. A tremble rocks through him. “God, Esca. Like that corset in there?”

Esca’s head snaps up, and then his face smooths out into the widest smile yet. His fingers comb over his ears. “You saw my pretty corset? I forgot I left it drying in there.”

“It is pretty,” Marcus agrees. He knows Esca will be sexy in it, but his mind takes a turn that is quite a different approach and his blood spikes at the thought. _What if I look sexy in it, too_? And he swallows, asks, “Would it fit me?”

Esca freezes and then snorts lightly, kissing gently, “My, who is the unexpected one now?”

Heat fills Marcus’ face but his wish is out there now so he doesn’t take it back (the benefit of alcohol) but he won’t push it either. “Would that mess you up?”

“Oh, no, no, duckie, I didn’t mean to make fun,” he leaves a quick series of kisses to glue the apology in place. “You’re just a bundle of kicks, ‘soll.”

“So are you,” Marcus grunts.

He giggles. “You are sweet, aren’t you? Here--it _says_ one-size fits all. Let’s find out.”

Marcus is left on the bed quite suddenly as Esca flies across the room on light feet, some kind of majestic bird with trailing tail feathers. In just his shorts, Marcus is cold without the skirt covering his legs and Esca’s delicious breath washing over him, but it is only a minute, even less, before Esca is back with the lingerie and a wicked smile.

“I think you were lying to me when you said you haven’t thought about lace knickers.”

“I guess I was lying to myself,” Marcus says with a nervous shrug, “Or it honestly never crossed my mind until now, but when I saw that thing...”

“What a night,” Esca muses almost to himself again. As he begins to help Marcus into the contraption—who is thrilled to find it has a skeleton of wood--he says kindly, “now it’s all in good fun, Marcus. We can stop whenever you like, or you can wear it home. I won’t tell a soul.”

The thought of doing that—of walking into his big house in LA and greeting his maid _or Cottia_ with this thing hidden under his suit, them none the wiser—sets a deep ache in him; an ache to have that kind of secret. Victoria’s secret, hey, ha! He gulps and trembles as the modest cups on the front line up with his nipples and Esca starts straightening the laces.

Marcus runs a palm down the red velvet hugging his side. Lightning flickers unnoticed through the cracks in the shade and thunder rolls, but Marcus is too transfixed with the texture under his hand, the play of light on the fabric and the shadows of the lace.

“You’d let me keep this?” he asks.  He can’t imagine surrendering such a treasure to a stranger from in out of the rain; even a friend from ten years ago. It seems all-together too private a thing to do. “I can just buy my own.”

His hands keep traveling from hip to nipple and back. It feels so lovely against his body that he can’t stop. His favorite parts are where the velvet turns into lace on the edges, where loose floppy ribbons bleed out of the top between the frilly silk cups.

Then with a smile, Esca twists his fingers into those ribbons in the middle and jerks, _hard_.

Marcus gasps as the corset tightens like a python around him, squeezing his ribs closer and flattening his lungs. It’s tight, but it isn’t until Esca does it again (this time at the bottom) that Marcus realizes just what _tight_ means. He feels like he can’t move an inch. Breathing is suddenly a job to remember.

With one more tug that yields no more movement, Esca grunts happily and ties the laces in a double knot. Marcus looks down at his captured body. The black ribbon laces are brutally stretched in a long uniform line of X’s down his stomach. The black lace frill on either side does not meet at the bottom or even come close to it, as Marcus has seen it do on women in movies, with their hour glass figures allowing the corset to close around them like a trap—and he’s sure that’s how it fits Esca—but it does not deter him or make him feel fat. In fact, it makes him feel sexier in a weird way. It’s his strength on display—just like Esca’s legs under that skirt.

“Do you feel pretty Marcus?”

He nods.

“Do you feel stronger?”

“Yes,” he breathes, showing his wonder that Esca could be on this page with him. Esca runs his fingers through Marcus’ hair. “So you get it now.”

The last hour of conversation—of word choice and definitions—sharpens into clear focus. He nods, breathless, and pulls Esca closer to mouth at the glittering chain resting against that smooth, strong chest. He lips the warm fabric of the shirt until he can feel a hardened nipple beneath. Then softens the cloth with hot breath as he speaks, pleads, “Esca...”

“Hmm,” Esca responds, running his hands deliciously down the amazing swoops of Marcus’ sides and lower, stripping him of his boxers. Freed, Marcus’ heavy cock bounces against the frilly edge of the corset, and leaks heavily at the play of lace against the head as he wiggles out of the men’s underwear entirely. Marcus steels his breath against the delightful sensation, least he finish too soon like a teenager.

There is a small smile of deepest satisfaction on Esca’s sharp face as he watches, ignoring the tent in his skirt. Marcus reaches down for the hem of the skirt and slides one hand up the inside of one smooth, hard leg, right to the knee, where he grips.

“Blimey,” Esca chokes, clutching his shoulders, but he makes no advancement on Marcus. He seems to be trying to think. Marcus doesn’t want to think right now, he wants to _feel_. He allows his hand to travel further, until he feels radiating heat and realizes Esca is commando under there. Softly, he brushes the length and imagines it filling him. He trembles again.

“Esca please...”

At last, Esca pushes him back on the bed until he is fully reclined and Esca is between his knees. When the next crash of thunder shakes the bed and rolls away in every direction, Marcus is able for the first time in his life to hear the beauty in the terrifying sound of the sky falling. He fists the covers beneath him as he cowers from such an almighty force, but then Esca is there to chase it all away with another feral kiss.

As he fucks Marcus’ mouth with his tongue, Esca fetches the hands from under his skirt and pins both arms above his head. Marcus squirms and the frilly cups brush his nipples, so he squirms some more. Above him, Esca is thinking again.

“Come on,” Marcus says. “What are you waiting for?”

“There’s something I’d like to do...”

“Then do it,” Marcus says with a light laugh, drawing his knees closer, trying to work them under the hem of the skirt to feel hot skin again--or maybe to feel the skirt resting on his own legs. He doesn’t know anymore.

“I need your permission first.”

“What is it?”

Esca reaches under the bed and comes up with furry handcuffs. Marcus blinks at them and then remembers that his hands are above his head, and how he generally loves it when his lovers pin him thusly. But this is different. Handcuffs won’t forget and let go when things get intense.

He knows, logically, that Esca can’t keep him pinned like this and have free hands to properly pleasure him—but that’s just it. Marcus has never submitted like that before, so entirely; he’s never surrendered his duty to return each caress. He feels if he does that then this won’t be an act between two people, but rather one person playing with another. He’ll become a toy like the handcuffs and the corset, to be used to Esca’s end.

“No?” Esca asks, clearly crestfallen.

Marcus licks his lips. “I don’t know—I mean, I don’t even know you,” Marcus laughs as he says it, aware that such an excuse hardly counts when you’ve shared a drink like a date and are now naked and kissing the guy in his bed. Kind of an all-stops-out situation as it is. But, “why?” he needs to know.

“Why?” Esca’s eyes crinkle with a smile and he brushes Marcus’ jaw with the furry cuffs. “...that’s difficult to explain, dove. I can show you. Do you trust me?”

Thunder cascades again with lightning and Marcus considers, “I...”

“Oh, please,” Esca breathes and kisses him lightly. “Please trust me, Marcus. This can be so _good_ if you’ll just trust me.”

“But I’ve never...”

“That’s okay. I’ll take care of you, I promise,” He kisses Marcus deeply, with a tenderness not yet seen in him tonight. He trembles, “Oh, Marcus, I’ll be so good to you if you’ll let me. You’re so beautiful; let me have you like this, right now on a night like this.  Oh, Please.”

Ten years is a long time, and the mean little goalie called Frankie that Marcus knew has changed so much that he even has a completely different name—but Marcus can see that the metamorphosis happened around the central core of an intensely loyal, honorable, player of fair games. So long as they established some rules...

“Okay,” Marcus breaths and it’s like the breath puts electricity into Esca. He looks so bright and ecstatic, _lit up_ with Marcus’ trust. He’s amazing--and definitely _not_ a serial killer, Marcus bats that paranoid thought right out of his head. As Esca kisses him all over in a hundred little unmistakable _thank you_ ’s, Marcus nods, repeats, “Okay...just don’t hurt me.”

“Oh, never! _Never,_ Marcus; I would never hurt you.” He sits up and opens the cuffs, slips them around Marcus’ wrists, kissing his palms and fingers tenderly as he does so, making Marcus grin shyly. The cuffs are padded and snug to his wrists with a very short chain of just two or three links so he has no slack for any movement beyond a few inches up and down the pole of the bedframe.

Turning his hands in the cuffs is interesting as the fur slides against the tender skin of his wrists.

His heart is pounding, and his uncertainty shows in his cock. Esca moves down his body and bends to ghost his lips over Marcus’ length. “You’re okay,” he promises and kisses the cock sweetly, “You’re safe, baby. I’ve got you, and I’m going to take care of you.”

“I trust you,” Marcus whispers and then he gasps when Esca suddenly takes him into his mouth. His toes curl, his arms strain against the cuffs. Esca holds his hips down so that Marcus can’t lift them, but his back bows off the bed as Esca sucks.

Then his mouth is off him and the tip of Esca’s tongue runs up the underside of Marcus’ cock and then up the laces of the corset to his chest, his neck, to his ear. “Good, you’re doing well. Do you like it so far?”

“Please,” Marcus squirms, “You’re mouth. Please.”

“First say you’re my pretty girl,” Esca whispers. Marcus’ breathing hitches in surprise and Esca’s smile is slow and wide. He strokes Marcus’ cheek, then his eyebrow, and ruts against him lightly as he waits.

They’re just words, and if it’s want Esca wants--or even what he needs--Marcus knows he won’t deny him that; not when Esca has been so giving. “I’m... I’m your pretty girl.”

“Yes,” Esca kisses him, “Yes, and such a sweet girl.” His fingers run through Marcus’ hair, blunt nails across his scalp, and it feels good. Esca holds to his promise and returns his mouth to Marcus’s leaking cock, lapping up the drops and teasing the flushed sensitive skin. The tip of his tongue follows the thick veins and Marcus shivers.

He watches, head raised, as Esca takes him in again, bobbing his head up and down as he holds the base and plays with his balls. The cock pops from his lips like a lollypop and Esca grins at him and strokes up and down his thighs with flat hands. “Relax,” he urges quietly. “Lay back and close your eyes. There’s a good girl.”

With his eyes closed, Marcus can’t tell what Esca will do next and it spikes his blood as Esca teases him about it a little, first kissing his inner thigh, then ghosting his fingers over his cock, then finally gives his whole mouth again. Marcus pants and squeezes his eyes shut. A crack of thunder makes him jump and then he is shaking. Esca is suddenly over him, as comforting as a blanket. The fabric of his skirt covers Marcus’s legs reassuringly and the press of Esca’s erection to his stomach is enticing.

“I’ve got you,” he promises. “Just focus on me, on what I’m doing... Do you like it?” He’s reached down and is jacking Marcus with a firm grip and Marcus groans out an affirmative noise, arms bulging as he pulls against the cuffs. The bedframe gives a jolt and Marcus has the distinct impression that if he pulls hard enough, he can get free.

“Oh, you’re so strong, such a strong, sweet, girl,” Esca whispers in clear awe and nibbles his ear.

“Esca...” Marcus pants.

“Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to fuck me.”

“I will,” he promises as he moves down Marcus’ body once again. “But first I want to get you ready, nice and open and wet because I don’t want to hurt my pretty girl.”

Marcus makes a noise of want and Esca chuckles, “You like it when I call you that.”

“Yes,” he confesses and he’ll panic over what it all means later but right now he just doesn’t care; he wants _more_.

“Oh, you’re so good, Marcus.”

A splattering noise makes Marcus open his eyes and he sees that Esca is emptying the very last squirts of lube from a bottle into his hand. He tosses the empty tube carelessly over his shoulder and Marcus digs his head into the pillows as he is finally spread open and touched where he’s been begging for it.

“You’re going to open right up for me aren’t you?” Esca asks. Marcus draws his knees up obediently and spreads his knees as far as he can. Esca is suddenly over him like a blanket again, hooking knees over his shoulders and folding Marcus in half; usually not a difficult position for him, but the edges of the corset bite into him in interesting ways and his breathing shallows even more than it has been.

“Alright?” Esca asks, running fingers through Marcus’ hair as his other three fingers work slowly into him, one by one. Marcus focuses on breathing through his nose and nods as something shakes through him—be it thunder or desire there is no telling.

“It’s good, Esca, _so good_ ,” he pants.

Esca makes a low noise of delight and his pace quickens, forcing light little gasps of pleasure out of Marcus as that sweet spot is hit again and again. In the middle of this glorious torture, Marcus laughs deliriously. It brings a surprised snicker out of Esca with a smile that moves his ears back. “My, my, Marcus, look at you.”

“Hmm,” Marcus says. He can just imagine what this looks like; him in a corset like this, the man preparing to top him into next week fully clothed and in a spring time skirt, no less. And to think he’d been expecting an old soccer teammate barely interested in reconnecting, maybe a few good laughs over the old days, probably just a couch with not enough leg room and a cup of coffee in the morning as they talked about storm damage before Marcus’s cab showed up.

Esca’s breath roars out of him. “Finger you all night, can't I? Would you like that, big girl?”

Marcus whimpers and tries his best to thrust up. He is bent in half and hindered by a corset and handcuffs (both of which tease his skin fantastically with their sensual textures when he writhes just right) so core muscle is all he has to work with, but it’s enough to make his point, and to prompt another reverent,

“Ah, strong. So gorgeous and strong,” a few warm kisses are dropped on his left knee where Esca is resting his head on the hairy leg flung over his shoulder. “It wouldn’t hurt you if I went right now,” he says, scissoring the two fingers he has deep inside. Marcus arches and nods, but Esca drops another kiss to his leg and he works the third in. “Best, just to be sure. I said I wouldn’t hurt you, and I won’t, Marcus.”

Marcus laughs again. “I think all that would end up hurt is the bed.”

“Ha! Too right, dove. I need a stronger bed for my strong girl.”

Marcus shivers, and suddenly Esca sits taller. Marcus’ legs are allowed to fall to the bed on either side of Esca as the front of the skirt fans out over Marcus’s cock and stomach, concealing half the corset.

Esca’s heat and hardness slowly replace his fingers and for a minute Marcus can’t remember how to breathe with these reshaped lungs.  His eye lashes flutter and he rolls his head on the pillow, “Oh, yes, _Esca_!” he moans.

That savagery is back as Esca kisses him, but in direct opposition to that is the gentle roll of his hips and the fluid pump by which he fucks Marcus at a nice and steady rhythm. The candlelight in here is a warm glow over Esca’s skin, washed away by each scourging flash of lightning bleeding through the thin shades.

Marcus doesn’t see it so much as feel each time, like the ghost of a hiccup in that space where he should flinch. He is too busy just now writhing in pleasure to properly panic. The thunder he mistakes for his own shouts and cries, or maybe it is the other way around, but again, with Esca over him, _inside him_ , he _is_ still afraid, but it feels good. It feels safe to panic, because he knows Esca will take care of him.

And just like that, the handcuffs make all the sense in the world. By holding him still, they set him free. He turns his wrists in them just to feel the fur as Esca’s hips roll into his with a friction just like the lace against his skin under Esca’s soothing hands.

“Yes,” Esca rasps when he feels Marcus surrender to everything—to him, to the pleasure, to the storm. His pace falters and then speeds up, fingers tightening in Marcus’ short hair. “Yes, Marcus, that’s it.”

Marcus cries out as he lets go of everything. The bed frame groans, and something in the corset pops, and Esca gasps and hitches up his skirt as Marcus comes. Just like that, he comes without Esca’s hand on his cock at all.

“Holy crap,” Marcus pants with a smile. “That’s...that’s a first—hahmmph,” he says when Esca’s next push grates over _very_ sensitive nerves. Esca takes his face in both hands. His lips roll between his teeth and his brow furrows as he pumps a few more times.

“Yeah, that’s it, baby,” Marcus says tightly, stroking his face. “Come on. Come on.”

With a shudder that racks his body, Esca pulls out quickly and comes all over the tender junction of leg and groin. Marcus arches into the sensation, spreading the come further up his hip, but he’s mindful not to let it get on the corset. He’s already noticed Esca’s care with these clothes, with the way he moved the skirt before Marcus branded it.

Esca snickers as he softens over him, and lowers to rest on an exhausted Marcus. “Holy crap,” he says in his best imitation of Marcus’ accent. It’s still as poor as it was in college, but possibly even more hilarious. Marcus laughs and knocks his knee into Esca’s little frame, rocking him sideways. He opens his mouth, but is cut off by the sudden wail of a siren outside.

A storm siren.

Esca’s eyes fly round, and Marcus’ body seizes up.

“SHIT!”

They scramble. Marcus can’t sit up. The fucking handcuffs! The bed groans and cracks, the legs at the top literally leaving the floor twice before Esca manages to scramble up Marcus’ body and undo them, apologizing, but laughing because Marcus is laughing—he’s _laughing_ in the middle of a hurricane warning!

But you have to admit, the timing. Come on.

Cub is outside the bedroom door, barking like mad. Marcus scoops up his pants and stumbles into them—walking, not easy; his knees are weak--as Esca throws open the door and scoops up the animal, saying something about a basement.

“Basement,” Marcus repeats as he focuses on getting one leg in at a time. At last, he is dressed. “Good—yeah-- _God_ , listen to that!” Marcus slides to a stop on a rug in the living room and tilts his ear toward the window. The wind is atrocious, _screaming_ against the building in a fury he’s never heard before. It doesn’t just sound like loose trashcans and fly-away plastic signs whipping around out there anymore, either. It sounds like ghosts.

_Holy hell, how did Marcus not hear this a second ago?_

He looks at Esca as the man runs all over his apartment with his skirt kicking up around his knees, spitting and pinching the candles out with Cub writhing and barking under his arm. He doesn’t really look like he can overpower a hurricane, but boy can he.

Marcus suddenly has the bizarre urge to grab the little man in a bear hug and never let go, to suck on that sweeping neck until his mark is there for the world to see, so they’ll know that Esca is just for him, his person to trust so completely he can go out of his head even as a hurricane rips through town. _His_ person, no one else’s.

An alarming and sobering thought, to be sure. And that doesn’t stop the hurricane from happening.

So instead, Marcus joins the fire-prevention effort, and kills all the flames on his side of the room. As they work, the siren winds high and then drops low, building and tumbling as the wind only builds and builds and _builds_. Sand and pebbles and the occasional branch or other such thing pelt the outer walls and windows. Without the candlelight it is dark and cold and he feels like the storm can get in now.

His hands are shaking so much he can’t catch the wick of the last candle and burns himself. His raincoat falls over his arm and then Esca is there with a flashlight, short breath extinguishing the flame between Marcus’ fingers and then Esca’s firm frame ushers Marcus out the door.

“Coat, there’s a peach,” Esca says as he locks the door behind them. Marcus realizes he is still in the corset, and quickly shrugs the still damp coat on and closes it around his secret. Other tenets are already crowding the stairwell; they had been _less occupied_ and more prepared to bunk off at the first note of the siren.

Catching Esca’s eye in the dim light of the flashlight, Marcus snickers and his whole body shakes--with fear or mirth, he just doesn’t know anymore. Esca’s eyes crinkle and glitter, but then the building shakes with thunder, and the scales tilt a little more toward fear. Marcus balks. Esca takes his hand, “Run, darling.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus and Esca get stuck in the basement all night

Marcus and Esca race barefooted to join the exodus downstairs. Flashlights flash like unsynchronized strobes and footsteps and children’s cries echo in the close-space. Cub wriggles free once they are at the bottom on the stairs and runs off to sniff in all the corners.

The basement is lit by a generator; the landlord is trying to shout reassurances over the chattering masses. Marcus and Esca weave quietly through neighbors sharing stories—

“Had the storm radio on the whole time, new before the sirens—“

“—always read when it storms, and its _right at the good part_ —“

“—she sleeps through anything, thank God, but then she woke up, and you know how they say babies and animals know—“

Marcus swallows an acute, rising panic. This is real. This is happening. _A hurricane_.

Esca’s hand tightens around his. “Hey, just a precaution, I’m sure. They trigger that bloody siren for any old thing—here.”

They have crossed the cold bare cement of the floor and are now in a corner quieter than the rest, and Esca turns to wrap his arms around Marcus in another one of those reassuring hugs, but this time Marcus can’t really feel the touch because of the corset. “Just don’t think about it, hm?”

Someone knocks roughly into Marcus on their way passed. He and Esca stumble, and Marcus steps on Esca’s foot.

“AH! Watch it, fat ass!” Esca barks to the neighbor, nursing the painted toes Marcus just crushed.

“What’d you just call me?” the guy asks, turning back around to face them. The guy is no taller than Marcus, but thicker with an undistinguishable blend of muscle and fat. The type Esca dated in college—all tattoos and girth, no real brains.

“I said watch where you’re going. We’re standing here!” Esca riles.

The man looks Esca up and down and smirks cruelly, “The fuck are you supposed to be, tiny?” he asks.

“Hey,” Marcus says firmly, stepping up and wrapping his arms around Esca’s thin, tense shoulders from behind. His coat has fallen open so that Esca leans against velvet and lace. The furry handcuff is hanging from his sleeve and swings against Esca’s wrist as he stacks his hands on the back of Marcus’ forearm, chin set forward smugly.

“Don’t make this a problem, pal.” Marcus says evenly. “Just say excuse me next time you barrel into somebody.”

“Whatever,” the guy says, outnumbered by weirdoes. He continues on his way.

“Wow,” Esca says, turning gracefully on his toes to smile up at Marcus. “That was lovely of you. Thank you.”

Marcus shrugs, suddenly bashful. “I’m usually not that confrontational—it’s the storm. I’m on edge.”

“Oh, you do look a wreck,” Esca says, combing Marcus’ hair back from his forehead and getting it to lay flat in the back. “How’re you’re wrists? There’s meant to be aftercare so I can clean you up, take care of you... Fucking sirens,” he mutters darkly.

Marcus can feel the stickiness oozing slowly down his legs and wishes they had had time to clean that up at least. “How’s your foot? I didn’t mean to step on you.”

“Not your fault.”

“You can still dance? I don’t want you missing rent.”

Esca glares over at the big guy and then shakes his head. “Tomorrow, I’ll be on the pole better than ever.”

Marcus’ cock swells a little at the mental image. He clears his throat and Esca grins wickedly. “You were doing well. You didn’t even know it was bad until the siren told you, did you?”

“No,” Marcus laughs and then his eyes widen. “Did you?”

Esca looks a little guilty.

“ _Maniac_!” Marcus says, rocking Esca again and burying his lips in that spikey hair. “Lunatic. Complete whacko. I _knew_ I shouldn’t have let you tie me up!” He’s only half teasing and pecks Esca on the lips, “but I have to admit, you make one helluva good--”

Something small tugs on Marcus’ coat and they look down into the face of a small child who lifts Cub by his elbows, exposing his hairy white belly. The dog is about as big as the little girl and his tail _thwaps_ the ground with each wag as he tries to lick her face upside down.

“Is this your doggie?” she giggles.

“His names’ Cub and he’s almost a wolf. Do you like him?” Esca asks.

“He’s sweet!”

Cub breaks free and scampers off with toenails clacking on the bare floor. People nearly trip on him and others reach down to scratch his ears for comfort or out of boredom. The little girl remains, her eye on Marcus’s peeking lace.

Blushing, Marcus closes the coat and clears his throat, hastily stuffing the handcuffs out of sight. The little girl laughs, showing missing front teeth. “You’re underwear’s prettier than my mama’s.”

Esca laughs. “Is it, now?”

The mother appears then and scoops her up with a very apologetic smile to them both. “She bothering you guys, Esca?”

“Not at all,” Esca says.

“They say we’ll be out of here soon.”

Cub comes bounding back, so Marcus makes himself comfortable in the floor against the wall and focuses on giving the dog a good belly scratch until Esca is done getting the storm updates. Then Esca is making himself comfortable next to him.

“Cold?” Marcus asks when Esca tugs his feet into his skirt. He wraps an arm around him and Esca leans into his warmth appreciatively. Marcus sees the glittering diamond stud in his ear and gently tugs to watch it sparkle. Esca sighs contentedly, and then prods the corset. “Comfortable? We can loosen that thing.”

Marcus considers it. True, he can’t bend at the waist, but once he lies down on his side, propped up on an elbow, he is fine. “Not yet.”

“No? Blimey, Marcus. I wish we weren’t in public right now.”

Marcus hums and bites his lip, tugs Esca down to lay beside him. “Lemme wear it until the storm’s over. It helps. I feel like it’s literally holding me together,” he confesses.

“Ah.”

Cub snoops around—sticking his nose into places that smell interesting and getting smacked away—before burrowing into Esca as the tiniest spoon of three.

“I know what you mean. That’s why I used to sub in the BDSM scene.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I wanted to feel…” Esca’s voice trails off and he shrugs, “I wanted to feel like a girl, I guess, because if I felt like that then I felt like I was okay. I didn’t know it could be as simple as putting on a skirt in the morning. Getting some big bloke to knock me around was as close as I could get.”

“Jesus.”

“Don’t need your pity party, thanks.”

“I didn’t mean--“

“It’s okay. I enjoyed it, just got tired of it. It’s like a security blanket I out grew.”

Marcus chuckles, “There you go again, being unexpected. Only _you_ would call leather and chains and candle wax a security blanket.”

“Don’t knock it till you've tried it,” Esca shoots back with a grin. “And anyway, Peach, who are you to tease about security blankets? You had a teddy bear in your dorm, if I recall.”

“Eagle is an eagle and he is awesome; the first toy my parents ever gave me and the only one I’ve kept.” Snickering, they talk about security blankets and childhood boogie-men and imaginary friends for a little while. “He was _blue_?” Marcus asks with a light laugh.

“Yeah, he was prince of the blue people, wasn’t he?” Esca whispers back. The basement has fallen quiet. The tenets have given up their last strand of hope to sleep in their beds and have settled down for the night. A mother sings to her children and other groups converse softly.

Marcus stares up at the bare pipes on the ceiling and shakes his head. After all this, he has ended up sleeping on a hard cold floor anyway, but he doesn’t panic because they can’t even hear the storm down here and he isn’t alone; Esca is here, and they are way past strangers now.

“What’s going to happen in the morning?” Marcus can’t stop himself from asking.

Esca freezes with his fingers tangled in Cub’s thick fur. “I don’t know. What would you like to happen?”

“I _have_ to go back to LA. But I want to see you again.” All at once the feelings he’d felt when he wanted to bite a mark into Esca’s neck and claim him, swamps Marcus and he moves closer and adds, “More than that, Esca, I-- I want you to come with me.”

The silence that answers is enough for Marcus to start regretting his honesty. It was stupid, too much pathetic peachiness. Adults don’t actually let themselves get this crazy. Esca fingers the fur of the cuffs and speaks very softly, “Can I think about it, Marcus?”

“Please,” Marcus says, ghosting his lips across the back of Esca’s neck. “Please do.”

He drifts to sleep before the all-clear comes at dawn.

Esca wakes him and helps him to his feet. Marcus feels stiff and frozen solid and he aches in all the wrong places, plus all the good places that remind him what they were doing last time they had a bed at their disposal. Without a word, they shuffle upstairs with the tide, everyone yawning and blinking, and moaning about warm covers or soft mattresses or food to eat.

Marcus turns the fur cuff on his wrist anxiously, trying to discern from Esca’s body language what he’s decided. If Esca won’t come to LA with him—he’s already panicking just at the thought alone. He has been cracked open, all kinds of new kink exposed now and he doesn’t think he will handle it very well on his own.

The first thing Esca does is step into some wedge heels and grab the leash and umbrella off a hook next to the door. Cub’s been whining. “Go lay down, Marcus. Sleep. I’ll be right back.”

Marcus spends maybe twenty-five seconds alone in the dark apartment before he stuffs his feet into his leather shoes and runs out after Esca

The sky is a light golden brown dappled with silver and grey clouds. A fine mist fills the air. There is absolutely no wind, as if the hurricane spent all the supplies. Palm branches and sand cover the street and the cars, road signs lean at a forty-five degree angle. Marcus spots a plastic pink flamingo dangling by its neck from the power lines.

Esca has his bell-shaped clear umbrella over one shoulder and examines the scene as Cub tests the limits of the retractable leash, sniffing around and marking all the new territory. At the sound of the door closing behind Marcus, Esca turns and doesn’t look happy.

“I told you to sleep.”

“I want to talk.”

“I still need to think.”

“You’ve been thinking all night, haven’t you gotten anywhere?”

“Yes, I have. Have you? Marcus you’ve been through a lot tonight. I think we need to spend a little time apart so you can get your head on straight.”

“You don’t think I’m thinking logically right now?”

“I hope not.”

The mist clings to Marcus like a fine spider web, beading in his hair and eyelashes, sparkling on the coat. “What’s that supposed mean?”

“You just let me chain you to my bed and have my way with you and we’ve known each other less than twenty-four hours!”

Marcus’s expression is wholly wounded. “We played soccer together for _four_ years. _Team mates_ ; you didn’t change _that_ much Esca, and fuck you. If I want to try new things then I don’t need your permission to do it. It was your goddamn idea anyway! What--was that some kinda test I didn’t pass?”

Esca’s face is hard and his nostrils flare. “Not an intentional one, Marcus. I was a little out of my mind from the storm and the drink. We didn’t even think to use a condom and you don’t seem at all worried. What am I supposed to think--”

“Fuck. You.” Marcus cuts in. He turns on the sand and charges back into the building. His eyes sting and are painfully dry in his damp face. He rubs at them until they water and then his nose starts to run as he barges back into Esca’s apartment.

So much for not panicking. So much for _trusting_ like that. _Never_ again. Not if the backlash hurts this badly. New plan, go home and forget this ever happened, forget the power that simple words like _girl_ and _pretty_ can have, power that he now knows gives words like _whore_ and _slut_ power too. Esca hadn’t said them, but he hadn’t needed to. Marcus had seen it in his face.

In the bathroom, he sheds the coat and rips at the ribbon of the corset. His hands are shaking too much and it takes him a minute to work the double knot out. The immediate pressure release is slight but tangible, and after tugging a few times at different parts of the laces, the corset releases him fully. He collapses on the sink as his bones turn to jelly and his head gets light, vision tunneling. The corset slides slowly down and catches on his pants around his thighs. Shaking, Marcus shuffles and steps out of the thing, kicking it aside.

In the dim glow of the breaking dawn, he can see the marks all over his body, a perfect, red angry after-image of the lingerie. Marcus rubs at the lines and lowers the toilet lid to sit for a minute. Once his head stops swimming, he dries his face and hair with another hand towel and then gets cleaned up and dressed in the suit hanging next to the corset’s bare hanger.

After a brief pause, he hangs the lingerie back up.

Esca hasn’t returned with Cub yet. Enough light filters through the windows to show Marcus the luggage case sitting between the armchair and the couch. He doesn’t know where he’ll go, but now that the storm has passed, that isn’t a problem.

When he exits the building the second time, Esca is nowhere in sight. Cub’s paw prints and Esca’s heel prints lead across the street and toward the ocean. Marcus puts both at his back and heads for the airport.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus is back in LA and suddenly life is complicated again

“Look, look, I ordered you this.” Cottia says happily a week later. Marcus has just stepped from his office on the way home for the evening. His assistant pulls a bag from under her desk and inside is a white t-shirt that says—

“I survived hurricane Romey 2012,” Marcus reads with a smile at the gift that isn’t really [a gift](http://archiveofourown.org/works/695640/chapters/1279918/) since she bought it with his card. He still can’t believe he experienced the same storm that had produced such a horrific number of injuries and dead. He’d felt so safe...

Of course, when it was over, Cottia had given him a good tongue lashing for not calling her ASAP to let her know he had been okay when it moved inland right over top of him. She’d been convinced for a while that he was actually dead of a heart attack, so the slogan meant a lot to both of them.

“Thanks, Cots, you read my mind.”

“Not really. I was hoping this would soften you up so I can have the weekend off.”

He rolls his eyes. “Just ask. Yeah, you’re free. Go nuts. I don’t want to hear from you until Monday.”

She fist pumps and starts collecting her things. “What about you? Any plans?”

She still doesn’t know exactly how he spent the night—“He had a [basement](http://archiveofourown.org/works/695640/chapters/1279918/). It was cool.”—or the fact that Marcus is wearing black cotton panties right now.

After three days of considerable panic and internet searches, he’s found this tiny foothold with his confused sexual identity and he is just trying to find which way is up. Though he is chagrinned to admit it, his panic and recent doctor’s visits have been a direct result of the clarity he’d experienced after finally stepping off the plane into sunny Los Angeles.

_How was Florida, Marcus? Bang any good strippers out there?_

_...Yeah, actually._

Not an answer he is proud of. And he knows it was not as cheap as it sounds---but maybe Esca is right; or at least, that is all he’d been referring to. Like a bumbling fool, Marcus had unwittingly left the impression that he is that kind of traveling businessman, a stripper for the night to help him relax in a new city, didn’t even ask for a condom (whoops; but give him break, he was out of his mind at the time.) The tests came back clean though, thank God.

Cottia knows about the tests, but she hasn’t asked questions. It’s just inappropriate for them to discuss their private lives. That’s a line they drew very quickly in this relationship. She could be a lesbian for all he knows.

“Need me to [confirm a](http://archiveofourown.org/works/695640/chapters/1279918/) reservation or something?” she asks.

“No,” Marcus laughs, “Learn what a weekend off means.”

“On it, boss,” she says, flitting out of there super quick like she has a train to catch. Marcus chortles and tosses the t-shirt over his shoulder as he takes the stairs.

Outside, the sun is bright and warm and the wind is soothing. He scrolls through contacts on his phone until he is staring at the number for Esca Briggs he’d had Cottia program in for him.

After discovering new ways to enjoy life, there is only one person Marcus can imagine doing it all with, one person he trusts to guide him through this dark forest. His thumb rests over the call button, but he can’t make himself push it. He knows what he’ll say if he can, but he is afraid it won’t work, and he’d rather remember the weekend as a wind-tossed throe of passion than as a heartbreak waiting to happen.

 _Long distance relationships never work_ , he thinks, pocketing the phone once more.

“Peach, you are one hard fellow to book an appointment with.”

Marcus freezes in his tracks, heart leaping into his throat. He spins. Esca is leaning on a car that is packed full of boxes and white over-stuffed trash bags; Cub is trying to claw his way out of the crack in the passenger side window.

Esca is wearing flatfooted sandals that show pink nail polish. The paint matches his tank top. Today’s skirt is black, just past his knees and pleated. The only jewelry he wears is a braided bracelet on his wrist and the gauge in his left ear. His hair is soft and styled naturally. “Apparently you have to have a sports team to sell or it’s just not worth your time.”

“I’ve been trying to call you,” Marcus chokes.

Esca’s smile stretches across his face. “I saw.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I gave you time to settle again, and then I thought it’d be more fun to see your dumb face when I surprise you,” his coyness melts away and he smooths his skirt before saying, “I’m sorry for what I said—for insinuating that you’re, you know, that kind of girl. I know you’re not. All of that just came out wrong.”

The hard sliver of contempt in Marcus softens into forgiveness and he smiles. “Thank you. Apology accepted.”

Esca’s chest expands and he looks around. “A whole week! Are we done panicking?”

“Only just,” Marcus confesses. He takes another look at the car. “Are you moving out here?”

“Perfect chance to; the club took some heavy damage and closed temporarily. Since I’m looking for a job anyway, I thought, I might as well look here, didn’t I?”

"Just like that?" Marcus asks happily. He has always admired Frankie's courage.

"Well. I can use a Restart,” Esca admits with a little shrug. Marcus is surprised to see a flash of uncertainty on that gorgeous face before it is schooled back into one of nonchalance. “Yeah, out here, I want to be Esca MacCunoval all the time, so that means saying only _she_ or _her_ when you talk about me, yeah?”

“Y-sure, yeah,” Marcus says quickly. Esca snorts softly and twitches his shoulders again, “Just see how it goes.”

"Yeah,” Marcus says again, for once understanding completely. Esca nods, looking away at the busy street. Marcus licks his lips and says, "It’s cool. I…I'm proud of you, I guess? Is that the right thing to say?"

Esca throws his head back and laughs. "Oh Peach! See? How could I let you stay out here alone? You need someone who understands this part of you! … _Especially_ if you plan to do anything major about it?"

"I'm...well, you know...I...maybe," he fumbles, shrugging but mostly nodding until he makes himself stop and be normal. Esca has a soft smile on his face, his arms folded neatly across his stomach. Marcus notices that his chest is a flat and strong as ever under that pink top and he wonders if Esca plans to wear padded bras as a part of this whole _she_ -thing. He shakes himself out of it and laughs, shrugs, “Yeah, still just… figuring it out.”

“We all are,” Esca winks.

Marcus laughs, nods, and his stomach flutters when Esca bites his lip and swings his hips, swishes his skirt around his knees a little like he’s bored… or maybe he does it just to feel pretty. Marcus suddenly thinks that he might like to swish every now and then. But he’s really not ready for anything but Victoria’s secret right now.

"It’s a tricky life choice, I won’t lie to you. We can’t just go off doing what makes us happy. We have to be careful about it.” The reality of what Esca is saying meshes with all of the scary stuff Marcus has read about on-line and it all crashes down on him.

 _It’s dangerous to be too different_.

He swallows and nods, "Oh—yeah, no, yeah, I know, I’ve read up and it’s…pretty scary. I almost called you—I wanted you to know you can always call me, you know, if more fat morons pick on you."

Esca giggles. “You’re very wonderful, Marcus... God, how many people have told you that?”

He smirks, laughing a little, and for a second they are just a couple of ball players in college again. “I like that you already know I’ve heard it before.”

“You must have done.”

“Yeah, lots of people say it. I have to put a lot of energy into not getting a big head.”

“Wanker,” Esca teases. Then he steps back to have a look over Marcus’ entire boring suit. “So...How are you, really?”

He considers telling the truth. _I miss you and I want us to be together because you’re here and you’re amazing and…_. But he doesn’t-- _can’t_ —say everything because they feel different now, somehow… To fill the silence, he starts babbling about work, boring shit no body outside of the office can know about, but Esca stops him.

“No, I mean… _how are you_?”

Marcus drops his chin but the feel of the black cotton panties caressing him reminds him to be stronger, more confident. He grins and takes a step toward his friend, “If you come home with me, you can find out.”

Esca throws his head back and laughs. “You _are_ smoother in the sunshine!”

“Well?" Marcus' heart is beating fast and he feels like maybe he is blushing a little, but it was worth a shot, and the rejection is really soft. One corner of Esca’s pink lips quirk upwards and his grey eyes plead for understanding.

Marcus clears his throat, and keeps his voice casual as he continues, "I can put you up for the night at least. Do you have a place yet?”

Esca ignores the topic change and eyes him dubiously. “Marcus, I mean for us to start over.”

“Okay.”

“No. I mean. Once I’m settled in and on my own two feet, maybe we can try for real at…whatever, but until then I really don’t need any more complications. I’m sorry—“

“--No, I get it—“

“--No listen, I’m sorry. It was _great_ ,” Esca says a little breathlessly. Then he bites his lip and looks away again. “But I really just need a friend right now.”

Numb, Marcus nods. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

He laughs a little, shaking his head, remembering the important thing which is that Esca is _here_ and not in Florida anymore. “Esca! You opened your doors for me when you didn’t have to. You came all the way out here instead of, I don’t know, New York or London or someplace because you knew I would be panicking and need some emotional support… The least I can do is try to return the favor.”

Esca laughs nervously and runs a hand through his soft hair. “I’m just in a weird transition now. Don’t know if we really covered it when we talked, but I wasn’t Esca in the daytime before, it had been strictly night business but I’ve been ready to make the change and now it’s happening and _a lot_ of things will be different for me.”

“Yeah,” Marcus says again, trembling with empathy because he can _see_ what Esca is talking about. He can _actually imagine_. “Me too.”

Esca’s neatly groomed eyebrows lift and his eyes sweep over Marcus’ suit again, this time like he has x-ray vision because there is a knowing smirk in the corner of his mouth. He pulls the t-shirt down from Marcus’ shoulder to have a look at it and smiles.

Marcus lets himself admire the shape and color of Esca’s mouth for only a second before he remembers his new role as best friend.

“Just stay the weekend,” he offers. “My couch is comfty. Cub’s allowed, it’s a pet building. Start looking for an apartment on Monday. It’ll be fun, like the old dorm days. We can talk about everything and just…you know, girl’s night.”

“Girl’s night,” Esca repeats, smiling broadly. “I’d like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So originally, the story ended on a very positive note with Esca there with all the things he owns and they make a date, but this is one of those stories that just itch to be continued, so in order to explore Marcus' sexuality a little more I've tweaked this epilogue into a terribly short chapter in order to allow an imidiate continuation. From here, I hope to weave Marcus' self-actualization with a slow burning very complicated love story between two drag-queens....or something....lol We'll see!


End file.
